Who Am I? What Am
I? Why Am I?
by Joseph McLaren, Hamilton, Ontario
This enticing story of "who we are"
was composed in the mid-1980s by Joseph McLaren (deceased 1999), a
close friend of Robert Haughton of Corpus-NCR. McLaren's philosophy
of life left an enduring imprint on Haughton's conception of reality.
I am a living, dying, pulsating, creating,
destroying thread of cosmic energy which universally and continuously
creates, transforms and destroys and recreates itself through its
cellular life, and which beats with molecular action of attraction
and repulsion. I am created and a creator. I am the harmonious, the
contradictory, the simple, the complex life of the universe having
an experience and - through me - observing its own experience.
I am "matter" and "thought" which encompasses
opposite poles which exist to complement each other: love and hate;
good and evil; life and death; greed and generosity; doubt and certainty;
fear and courage. I am the same substance as the air I breathe, the
water I drink, the food I eat, the earth I walk on, the rays of the
sun which penetrate and shower me and the radioactivity and chemicals
of the galaxies which gave birth to the earth and the sun. I am a
demonstration and an example of the universe in miniature undergoing
the same continuous metamorphoses.
I am mostly space. I am a body finite. I am the everlasting life in
essence, expressed and manifested as a body, experiencing existence
as thought and action in time and space. I am the eternal rhythm of
cosmic consciousness, personalized. I am a being living in interdependence
with, contributing to and taking from all other life. I am kin to
all other life.
I am a time capsule containing the knowledge and experience of all
my previous generations and species from the beginning of life on
earth, which exist in the memory of every cell of the organism which
creates me, grows me, thinks me, sustains me and dies me. I am the
possibility of an infinitely small change adding to the evolving life
of humanity. I am a bodily host for the microscopic life of bacteria
and microbes for our mutual needs.
I am brought forth by the world to be its reflection to demonstrate
"the way, the truth, and the life". I am the inevitable
result of the origins of the universe, and the laws of mathematics,
physics, chemistry, biology and time. I am who I am, and what I am,
and why I am, only because all other life is also, now and forever.
